antiquities

Elie Wiesel describes the Bible as “the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.”

I feel much the same way, which is why the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit “Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age” so thrilled me. The premise of the exhibit isn’t Israel or the Bible. Rather, it explores cross-cultural interaction and global communication during the Assyrian Empire from roughly 1200 – 400 BCE, the time period that many major Biblical events took place.

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A nearly 1,800-year-old Roman statue of a woman was discovered near Ashkelon after it was uncovered by a severe storm.

The weekend storm caused a cliff near a seaside archeological dig to crumble, exposing the nearly 4-foot-high statue, as well as the remains of a large building believed to be part of a Roman bathhouse.